General English course at Iranian universities has always been a controversial issue since the students taking this course are rather weak in English proficiency and need more authentic instructions based on accurate ...General English course at Iranian universities has always been a controversial issue since the students taking this course are rather weak in English proficiency and need more authentic instructions based on accurate need analysis. The materials applied in this course are mainly focused on reading comprehension. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to improve General English university students' main sub-skills of reading comprehension and see the effect of the possible changes in terms of time and the fields of study of the students. To do this, 168 university students taking General English course at university of Bojnord, including humanities, engineering, physical education, and sciences, received instruction on the main sub-skills of reading comprehension after taking a pre-test sample TOELF section of reading comprehension. After 16 sessions of 90 minute instruction, they took the post-test section of TOEFL sample of reading comprehension. Mixed between within subject analysis of variance was used to assess the impact of instruction for the four groups of students from pre-test to post-test. The findings of the study indicated that the effect of instruction in terms of time, from pre-test to post-test, and the interaction of time and fields of study were significant. Besides, changes for 10 sub-skills were the same among the four fields of study.展开更多
Language ecology is defined as the study of the interactions between any given language and its environment. It is primarily determined by the people who learn it, who use it, and more important than the previous ones...Language ecology is defined as the study of the interactions between any given language and its environment. It is primarily determined by the people who learn it, who use it, and more important than the previous ones by the people who transmit it to the others; that is, language teachers. English language is used as an additional language almost all over the world and an indispensable part of the ecology of this international language is culture. Thus, an ecological perspective demands a particular view of the practice of the culture of English language as situated and localized. Exploring such practice within the diverse contexts of the use of English language should be based on the genesis underpinning English language teachers' thoughts and practice. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to explore Iranian English language teachers' attitudes, knowledge, and skills of teaching culture in light of Vygotsky's genotypic approach. To do so, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 35 English language teachers in Iran. Their records were analyzed and discussed in terms of four different and interrelated spans, namely phylogenetic, cultural-historic, ontogenetic, and microgenetic. Phylogenetic span focuses on the development of language teachers as natural species and their physical evolution. The cultural historic span concerns the development of language teachers based on social, cultural, and historic bases. Ontogenetic domain investigates the role of language teachers across their human life span. Microgenetic span is related to a set of roles, activities, and interpersonal relations experienced by the developing person in a given setting. The findings of the study have indicated that there is a sharp contrast between Iranian English language teachers' attitudes towards teaching culture and their practice in the classroom which is due to the divergence between the their ontogenetic development of culture teaching on one hand and the policies of the English language institutes develop within the cultural historic span on the other hand.展开更多
The gap between the theories of second language acquisition and their practice in materials development has been a controversial issue in the field of applied linguistics. Recently, the findings of corpus linguistics ...The gap between the theories of second language acquisition and their practice in materials development has been a controversial issue in the field of applied linguistics. Recently, the findings of corpus linguistics have narrowed the gap. However, their practice, especially in the realm of vocabulary acquisition, has encountered pedagogic problems in the classroom because the authentic nature of the words in corpus-based examples was beyond the level of learners' comprehension which paves the way for the practice of pedagogic corpus linguistics. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to practice pedagogic corpus linguistics, and mainly data-driven learning, with the first year secondary school English language learners in Iran in terms of their vocabulary acquisition. To do so, 28 students participated in the study. Examples from the British National Corpus for the main words of each unit of their course book, Prospect 1, were presented to them in a course of 16 sessions. Those which were beyond their understanding were eliminated and those comprehensible for them, the pedagogic ones, were selected based on their reports regarding the comprehensibility of each corpus-based example.展开更多
This study attempted to investigate the similarities and differences regarding the conceptions of translation eternality among a small group of Iranian people of different social positions and different ages. Sixty-tw...This study attempted to investigate the similarities and differences regarding the conceptions of translation eternality among a small group of Iranian people of different social positions and different ages. Sixty-two participants were selected based on the maximum variation sampling. To gather data, semi-structured interview was utilized. The participants were asked a list of 11 questions collected from the existing literature on the similar topics. Then, the interviews were transcribed for analyzing the data. Besides, Erikson's (1959) theory of development was used to classify participants of different ages in four groups of teenager, young, middle age, and old. The high frequency factors were found and analyzed with the use of Bronfenbrenner's (1979) nested ecological model. Moreover, the participants were classified in 11 groups based on their social positions and their conceptions were analyzed with the same method. Broadly speaking, 17 central tendencies in the interviews were obtained: People mainly focused on subjects of the books, translation fluency, author's competence in writing, and translator's competence, translations which have common grounds with social events of Iran, advertisement, existence of movie or cartoon adaptation of the book, translator's awareness of the content of the book, existence of cultural similarities between the source and target culture, popularity of the translator, author, and the original book, conversational language in translation, translation fidelity, being both translator and author, and effect of censorship on translation. Besides, old participants seemed to have more precise view on translation eternality and teenager's concerns were mostly about the appearance-related issues.展开更多
文摘General English course at Iranian universities has always been a controversial issue since the students taking this course are rather weak in English proficiency and need more authentic instructions based on accurate need analysis. The materials applied in this course are mainly focused on reading comprehension. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to improve General English university students' main sub-skills of reading comprehension and see the effect of the possible changes in terms of time and the fields of study of the students. To do this, 168 university students taking General English course at university of Bojnord, including humanities, engineering, physical education, and sciences, received instruction on the main sub-skills of reading comprehension after taking a pre-test sample TOELF section of reading comprehension. After 16 sessions of 90 minute instruction, they took the post-test section of TOEFL sample of reading comprehension. Mixed between within subject analysis of variance was used to assess the impact of instruction for the four groups of students from pre-test to post-test. The findings of the study indicated that the effect of instruction in terms of time, from pre-test to post-test, and the interaction of time and fields of study were significant. Besides, changes for 10 sub-skills were the same among the four fields of study.
文摘Language ecology is defined as the study of the interactions between any given language and its environment. It is primarily determined by the people who learn it, who use it, and more important than the previous ones by the people who transmit it to the others; that is, language teachers. English language is used as an additional language almost all over the world and an indispensable part of the ecology of this international language is culture. Thus, an ecological perspective demands a particular view of the practice of the culture of English language as situated and localized. Exploring such practice within the diverse contexts of the use of English language should be based on the genesis underpinning English language teachers' thoughts and practice. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to explore Iranian English language teachers' attitudes, knowledge, and skills of teaching culture in light of Vygotsky's genotypic approach. To do so, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 35 English language teachers in Iran. Their records were analyzed and discussed in terms of four different and interrelated spans, namely phylogenetic, cultural-historic, ontogenetic, and microgenetic. Phylogenetic span focuses on the development of language teachers as natural species and their physical evolution. The cultural historic span concerns the development of language teachers based on social, cultural, and historic bases. Ontogenetic domain investigates the role of language teachers across their human life span. Microgenetic span is related to a set of roles, activities, and interpersonal relations experienced by the developing person in a given setting. The findings of the study have indicated that there is a sharp contrast between Iranian English language teachers' attitudes towards teaching culture and their practice in the classroom which is due to the divergence between the their ontogenetic development of culture teaching on one hand and the policies of the English language institutes develop within the cultural historic span on the other hand.
文摘The gap between the theories of second language acquisition and their practice in materials development has been a controversial issue in the field of applied linguistics. Recently, the findings of corpus linguistics have narrowed the gap. However, their practice, especially in the realm of vocabulary acquisition, has encountered pedagogic problems in the classroom because the authentic nature of the words in corpus-based examples was beyond the level of learners' comprehension which paves the way for the practice of pedagogic corpus linguistics. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to practice pedagogic corpus linguistics, and mainly data-driven learning, with the first year secondary school English language learners in Iran in terms of their vocabulary acquisition. To do so, 28 students participated in the study. Examples from the British National Corpus for the main words of each unit of their course book, Prospect 1, were presented to them in a course of 16 sessions. Those which were beyond their understanding were eliminated and those comprehensible for them, the pedagogic ones, were selected based on their reports regarding the comprehensibility of each corpus-based example.
文摘This study attempted to investigate the similarities and differences regarding the conceptions of translation eternality among a small group of Iranian people of different social positions and different ages. Sixty-two participants were selected based on the maximum variation sampling. To gather data, semi-structured interview was utilized. The participants were asked a list of 11 questions collected from the existing literature on the similar topics. Then, the interviews were transcribed for analyzing the data. Besides, Erikson's (1959) theory of development was used to classify participants of different ages in four groups of teenager, young, middle age, and old. The high frequency factors were found and analyzed with the use of Bronfenbrenner's (1979) nested ecological model. Moreover, the participants were classified in 11 groups based on their social positions and their conceptions were analyzed with the same method. Broadly speaking, 17 central tendencies in the interviews were obtained: People mainly focused on subjects of the books, translation fluency, author's competence in writing, and translator's competence, translations which have common grounds with social events of Iran, advertisement, existence of movie or cartoon adaptation of the book, translator's awareness of the content of the book, existence of cultural similarities between the source and target culture, popularity of the translator, author, and the original book, conversational language in translation, translation fidelity, being both translator and author, and effect of censorship on translation. Besides, old participants seemed to have more precise view on translation eternality and teenager's concerns were mostly about the appearance-related issues.